Here’s where I would write an introduction about the show, but it’s just too hot to think.
0 Day, Setup
I was outside for the past two years, and there was no place to hide from the sun. I’m putting my booth back inside the big circus tents. Maybe the immense shade will help.
Day 1 – Saturday, but more like Friday
When volunteers outnumber the visitors, you know something’s up. Both OU and OSU had their first football games of the season today, so that’s about 75,000 people who are off doing something else.
- Temperature: 100F
- Sales: $100
Day 2 – Sunday, with a little bit of Wednesday
(There aren’t any football games on Sunday, so y’all don’t have any excuses!)
I saw the occasional EMT gurney go by but didn’t think much of it. It’s good to be prepared when you have a large event open to the general public.
The crowd was so thin that when I went to get lunch, the volunteer who watched my booth was almost asleep when I got back. If this show really attracts 30,000 people, there were about 29,500 still not accounted for.
- Temperature: 102F
- Sales: $50, until 6:00pm when it picked up a little.
Day 3 – Monday, masquerading as Saturday for a few minutes
Sometime in the night, the word got out that there was some sort of art show going on! For the first few hours, it started acting like the show I was looking for!
By the end of the show, I overheard that nearly a dozen people passed out from heat exhaustion over the past three days — several of whom were artists.
- Temperature: 104F
- Sales: ..much more comfortable than the weather.
Thoughts
The volunteers are AWESOME. They brought us gallons of water, and shuttled us back and forth to the artist parking lot enough times to earn few thousand airline miles.
THE STAGE IS STILL TOO LOUD.
Booths at the extremities: I’ve done this show enough times to know where not to put my booth, but some of the newcomers evidently didn’t get the word.
- Why are artist booths behind the big tents? People just don’t go back there, especially if it’s hot and sunny. I talked to some of the artists, and it was pretty much a consensus — they were just sitting back there alone cooking in the sun.
- Why are we so close to the stage? Either move the stage further away, or turn it down.
Quotes
- An older gentleman gets my attention, “That print you call ‘Tired’, you oughtta rename it.” I’m all ears. He leans in with a deadpan expression, “Her name,” and with a raised eyebrow “… is Eileen.” Well done, sir. You get a slow clap. That’s smooooth.
- “What kind of painting is this?” Imagine light being painted onto a sensor with the help of a complex array of glass.
- “Hey daddy! These pictures actually look real!” …awww, so cute! :3
- (after looking at my entire wall of photos from Stillwater) “So, are you from Stillwater, or what?” Damn, they caught on.
Surrealism
It’s 104F, sales are weak, the crowd has thinned out so much that you could drive a truck up and down the aisles, and for those of us who stayed conscious and didn’t have to be carried out by EMTs, we were treated to a live saxophone performance. Now, I don’t know what it is with this show and surreal events. Two years ago, the huge hospitality tent got blown over with 70+ people under it while the band played “Devil Went Down to Georgia”.
…what did we have this time?
Anyway, see you at Utica!
(I’ll be on the NW corner of The Loft)